SSD Raid1 vs 15k Raid10

[Floren]

Not if you do HUGE writes like I see doing it on some large forums. READ's don't affect the SSD's.
For example, I installed 2 Intel SSD's for the MySQL server on a ultra busy site with 20,000 online users. After one year, the disks are at 50% of their life. If there would be an easy way to align the disks at 4k, it will extend their life tremendously. If you know any tricks on that, please let me know.

 

[ibaker]

Have heard back from my data centre and they have offered:
Intel i7 3930, 16gb ram, 2x300gb SSD, software raid 1, 1TB sata hdd, 10TB, 100mbps port, /29
at $179 per month plus $30 for cpanel. The same as I am paying now for my raid10 server.

Also using WHT (web hosting talk) request a quote, I have received a quote from Comforthost in Las Vegas:
Processor: Intel Quad Core E3-1230 v2
Memory: 16 DDR3-1333 ECC RAM
Hard Drives: 2x256GB SSD in RAID1
Bandwidth: 10TB Premium Transfer
IP Addresses: /27 (29 useable IPs)
Port Speed: 1000mbps (GigE)
Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA
Support: Tier-1 Fair Share Support
Operating System: CentOS 6.3 64bit
Control Panel: cPanel
Monthly Price: $169 with $0 Setup!

Just pinged both and there is an extra 10m/s for Las Vegas

 

[Gene Steinberg]

Good price. I was looking at their site, and didn't find any offerings that were comparable, however. Is that strictly a WHT thing?

 

[Slavik]

Not if you do HUGE writes like I see doing it on some large forums. READ's don't affect the SSD's.
For example, I installed 2 Intel SSD's for the MySQL server on a ultra busy site with 20,000 online users. After one year, the disks are at 50% of their life. If there would be an easy way to align the disks at 4k, it will extend their life tremendously. If you know any tricks on that, please let me know.

Congratulations, you submit a scenario of which probably less than <0.1% of forum owners will ever face.

My own servers writing on average, 300 kB/s in peak times (500-600 users online) and probably half that in off times so taking the higher figure.

~17Mb per minute
~1Gb an hour
~24Gb a day
~8.7Tb a year

Take an intel 320, with a quoted lifetime of 60TB. On the higher figure that SSD would last me nearly 7 years.

Now lets consider, the lower figure, that would estimate the SSD to last 14 years.

Take the quoted liftime figure at 75% of expected... it would still expect to last between 5-10 years...

 

[ibaker]

Good price. I was looking at their site, and didn't find any offerings that were comparable, however. Is that strictly a WHT thing?

On WHT you can submit a request for quotes and they will get 4 suppliers to send you a quote based on what you enter as your need...only received one so far

 

[WSWD]

I would go with the physical drives, not SSD. While being a lot faster, SSD's have a limited life time, based on the writes you perform on them. In Linux, you can check the degradation factor easy:

# smartctl -a /dev/ada0

But then, you have to monitor their state on a monthly basis. On the other hand, 4 15k disks will still offer you amazing performance for your site.

That's crazy! SSDs should have no problem lasting 5-10 years under even reasonably heavy use. We have had far more standard drives fail than SSD. In fact, we haven't had a single SSD drive fail yet.

 

[AlexT]

If you rent a server (as most do here), it shouldn't matter how long an SSD lives as free replacements are part of your monthly plan (they usually are) and your hoster is quick in doing the replacement.

 

[p4guru]

Not if you do HUGE writes like I see doing it on some large forums. READ's don't affect the SSD's.
For example, I installed 2 Intel SSD's for the MySQL server on a ultra busy site with 20,000 online users. After one year, the disks are at 50% of their life. If there would be an easy way to align the disks at 4k, it will extend their life tremendously. If you know any tricks on that, please let me know.

I thought alignment was for performance not longevity of writes ? where as over provisioning of SSD is more for performance IOPs + writes longevity ?

Well not all SSDs are created equal - you'd use the right type of SSD / drive config for the write situation

For heavy writes, probably need to look into Intel S3700 enterprise SSDs in 100GB, 200GB, 400GB and 800Gb capacities rated for write endurance at 4KB random writes of 1.825PB, 3.65PB, 7.3PB and 14.6PB respectively (PB = Petabyte = 1000 TB).

This is comparison to Intel 320 SSD rated up to 60TB write endurance. So Intel 100GB S3700 SSD is rated for 20+ times more writes than 300GB Intel 320 series SSD.

If you rent a server (as most do here), it shouldn't matter how long an SSD lives as free replacements are part of your monthly plan (they usually are) and your hoster is quick in doing the replacement.

Indeed very true as well - although there are many ways to extend that write endurance limit - over provisioning being one of them

 

[CTXMedia]

Not if you do HUGE writes like I see doing it on some large forums. READ's don't affect the SSD's.
For example, I installed 2 Intel SSD's for the MySQL server on a ultra busy site with 20,000 online users. After one year, the disks are at 50% of their life. If there would be an easy way to align the disks at 4k, it will extend their life tremendously. If you know any tricks on that, please let me know.

Do any of these links help Floren?: http://wiki.debian.org/SSDOptimization#File_system_and_partition_alignment

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[ibaker]

Thanks all...but can someone tell me what to do?

It seems that SSD is going to be ok so I currently only have 2 offers on the table:
WebNX in LA:
Processor: i7 3930
Memory: 16gb RAM
Hard Drives: 2x300gb Intel SSD in RAID1
Bandwidth: 10TB Premium Transfer
IP Addresses: /29 (5 useable IPs)
Port Speed: 100mbps
Location: LA, USA
Operating System: CentOS 6.3 64bit
Control Panel: cPanel
Monthly Price: $209 with $0 Setup!

Comforthost in Las Vegas:
Processor: Intel Quad Core E3-1230 v2
Memory: 16 DDR3-1333 ECC RAM
Hard Drives: 2x256GB SSD in RAID1
Bandwidth: 10TB Premium Transfer
IP Addresses: /27 (29 useable IPs)
Port Speed: 1000mbps (GigE)
Location: Las Vegas, NV, USA
Operating System: CentOS 6.3 64bit
Control Panel: cPanel
Monthly Price: $169 with $0 Setup!

ComfortHost ping from here in Melbourne Australia is an extra 10m/s

My concerns:
WebNX processor is desktop grade whereas ComfortHost is server grade
WebNX processor is faster than ComfortHost
ComfortHost ram is server grade compared to WebNX
ComfortHost port speed is 1gig compared to WebNX 100mb
WebNX in LA is closer to Australia than ComfortHost
I have never heard of ComfortHost

My objective is to provide the fastest possible service to my users here in Australia whilst at the same time provide me with an opportunity to open sites dedicated to areas like the UK, the USA and other geographic regions around the world...so does all of the above mean nothing as either one would provide the same for XF sites (i.e. I am not providing something that will punish a server)

Thanks for your help

 

[CTXMedia]

On the spec/price alone - ComfortHost; but I'd do some serious investigation beforehand to try and establish if their support is up to scratch.

 

[Floren]

Congratulations, you submit a scenario of which probably less than <0.1% of forum owners will ever face.

My own servers writing on average, 300 kB/s in peak times (500-600 users online) and probably half that in off times so taking the higher figure.

Ya, I agree. They pipe 80-90MB/sec on the dual NIC's to the MySQL server.
The server is a beast with 16 physical cores running MariaDB 5.2 on 128GB of RAM... so it handles everything very good.

 

[Floren]

Do any of these links help Floren?: http://wiki.debian.org/SSDOptimization#File_system_and_partition_alignment

Cheers,
Shaun

Thanks Shaun, do you guys have something for FreeBSD on ZFS? I googled a bit and talked to the techs but I cannot find nothing relevant. The SSD's I use are mounted as cache drives to speed-up the RaidZ2 setup.

 

[CTXMedia]

Thanks Shaun, do you guys have something for FreeBSD on ZFS? I googled a bit and talked to the techs but I cannot find nothing relevant. The SSD's I use are mounted as cache drives to speed-up the RaidZ2 setup.

No, sorry Floren, can't help with that. I pulled that link from my research thread on my private board that I used for speccing/ordering the new server - so it's all Debian specific.

 

[ibaker]

On the spec/price alone - ComfortHost; but I'd do some serious investigation beforehand to try and establish if their support is up to scratch.

Thanks Mate...seems there is only one bad thread about ComfortHost on WHT where the server setup took an extra day than promised...but I think he was pushing it anyway.

Re my post #30, ComfortHost have advised that they use 256gb Samsung 840's for SSD whereas WebNX use 300gb Intel 320's...I would prefer to stay with WebNX (sort of the devil you know kind of thing) but it seems ComfortHost price is more competitive...even had a price from Quadranetbut who is $5 cheaper than WebNX for a server less than what I have now...I just don't want to stuff my users around any more than I have to

 

[Mike Edge]

What about premium level shared hosting like we offer? Your databases are on SSD and the cost is far less then a dedi.

 

[ibaker]

What about premium level shared hosting like we offer? Your databases are on SSD and the cost is far less then a dedi.

Thanks Mike, I did consider you but the Canadian hosting was the killer for my current large contingent of Australian users...if you remember I also mentioned to you about managing our server and you said that you thought that was a good idea of an extra service you could offer...may talk to you more on that later if you are interested. I accept a price of around what I have been quoted by the others for a dedicated server plus I also run a video/audio/text chat room (123FlashChat) which really needs a dedicated server so it doesn't impact others...thanks again

 

[Mike Edge]

Sure Ian that would be great, I would still be interested in offering you that service. Yeah, i missed then mention of 123FlashChat, something like that, you would want a dedi. Good luck!

 

[ibaker]

Thanks everyone...you have been a great help

Today I ordered the build of my new server. I will be staying with WebNX although much wiser. The new server will comprise of:
WebNX in LA:
Processor: i7 3930
Memory: 16gb RAM
Hard Drives: 2x300gb Intel SSD in RAID1
Bandwidth: 10TB Premium Transfer
IP Addresses: /29 (5 useable IPs)
Port Speed: 100mbps
Location: LA, USA
Operating System: CentOS 6.3 64bit
Control Panel: cPanel

My server admin guy says that whilst the processor and ram are not server grade, the backup regime we have will more then compensate and the benefit is a much faster processor and still being in LA, there will be no greater impact to the majority of my users in Australia.

So thanks again for your help

 

[ibaker]

Well this is all done and thanks to Mike Edge, my new server was all set up with Percona and ElasticSearch, sites were migrated and it is screaming along nicely. The data centre also upp'd the processor and ram from the i7 3930 to the Xeon E5-1260 and the ram to ECC 1600 ram which means it is all server grade so now I have:
Processor: Xeon 6 Core e5-1650 (12 cores hyperthreading)
Memory: 16gb DDR3-1600 ECC RAM
Hard Drives: 2x300GB Intel 320 SSD in RAID1 plus 1x1TB SATA II Backup disk
Bandwidth: 10TB Premium Transfer
IP Addresses: /29 (5 useable IPs)
Port Speed: 100mbps
Location: LA, USA
Operating System: CentOS 6.3 64bit
Control Panel: WHM/cPanel
Monthly Price: $204 with $0 Setup and 1 month free

You can see the performance on my main site at www.recreationalflying.com

With this currently over kill server I have so much room now to expand including adding some great goodies to my sites